Chapter 4: One Drug, Two Drugs, Red Drugs, Blue Drugs
Emma woke early on the morning of her first chemo treatment, standing in front of her bathroom mirror for a long time, fingers brushing over the edges of the bandage just below her collarbone on the right side. The port insertion two days previous had gone smoothly enough, although she'd yet to see what the device looked like under her skin. The bandage would be removed for the first time today so that the port could be accessed for treatment. She shifted her fingers from the bandage over to the left, the tingling under her fingertips, nerve damage from the incision made during her biopsy, almost painful as she ghosted up and over her surgery scar. Cancer had already made physical changes to her body and she couldn't help but wonder what more changes would be in store after today. Her hair would suffer for sure. But what else? She wondered if the person staring back at her would still exist tomorrow, or next week, or a month from now, or a year from now. What would cancer take from her? And would she ever get any of it back?
Emma sighed and finally tore herself away from the mirror, heading into her bedroom to slip on a pair of jeans and a v-neck long sleeve shirt, bracing herself for whatever it was that would happen today and all of the days to follow.
xxxxxx
Emma chose a seat in the back corner of the room for the Chemo 101 session. Tucked away in the corner, she could observe without having to contend with everyone's eyes on her - not that her chosen seat stopped some people from spinning around in their own seats to not so subtly eye her with curiosity and that horrible twinge of pity Emma detested. She wondered if the novelty of her presence, of her age, would ever wear off. She could only hope - there was only so much staring she could handle before she lost it. She couldn't be the only person her age to have ever walked these halls - even if she hadn't spotted another patient even remotely close to her age yet.
As two nurses in scrubs walked into the room and got settled at the front, Emma watched people pull out pens and note pads and she frowned. The only thing she'd brought with her today was her wallet, her phone, and the anti-nausea medication that she was supposed to start taking before the chemo treatment started. Apparently she was a bad patient.
She was debating whether she should lean over and ask the older lady beside her if she had a spare pen when the nurses at the front started handing out bound books, explaining that these were hard copies of all of the information they were about to go over and for each of them to take one. Score one for underpreparedness, Emma thought, actually smiling as she took the offered book and eased back into her seat to listen to what the nurses had to say.
xxxxxx
Chemo 101 was a strange mixture of excessively boring - more than once Emma caught herself as her eyes began to glaze over and her mind started to wander - and completely horrifying. She was sure that her expression must have been a little bug eyed when one of the two nurses explained that it would be prudent for patients to flush the toilet twice on days immediately following chemo treatment for the protection of the people they lived with. There was something just a bit ridiculous about being told that these drugs she was about to receive were safe enough to be injected directly into her bloodstream but not safe enough to expose anyone else to the minute traces that might be left in a toilet bowl only flushed once. Not that Emma actually had to worry about those particular instructions because she lived alone and literally never had visitors but it was still a little terrifying to think about.
When the final slide was presented - a warning about getting to a hospital ASAP in the event of a fever and the importance of regular temperature checks - Emma bounced out of her seat and made a beeline for the door, dodging other patients and their loved ones as they hoarded towards the front, presumably to ask questions. Emma had no questions to ask. That's not to say that there weren't a million questions floating around her brain, because there were, but non that were worth asking, non that wouldn't answer themselves in the next hours and days. Well, there was one but it could not be answered by these nurses. It could not be answered by anyone, except perhaps by a deity that most days she did not believe in.
xxxxxx
There was still a half an hour before her chemo appointment time, so Emma stopped off at the cancer centre's cafeteria, devouring a chocolate chip muffin and a cup of coffee.
When it was nearer her appointment time, she climbed the two flights of stairs up to the chemo suite. She gnawed on her lip as she waited in line to check in, handing over her ID and rocking on the balls of her feet when it was finally her turn at the front desk. It didn't take long for her ID to be handed back, a plastic hospital bracelet to be fastened around her wrist, and a red laminated number to be held out for her to take.
"They'll call your number when they are ready for you," the receptionist explained.
Emma just nodded, taking the offered number, not bothering to ask why they wouldn't just call her name, and spinning towards the waiting area to the right of the desk. Her eyes scanned the room. It was crowded. Very crowded. Her hopes of sitting in some corner alone were fading quickly. She sighed and re-scanned the room, trying to sort out the best place to sit. It was on her second pass over the room that her eyes stopped on a table that was set up off to one side. Or, more specifically, they stopped on a person. Regina. Her anxiety at having to find a spot to sit diminished instantly, her search for a seat ending at least temporarily, as she headed towards the table instead.
"Hi," she smiled brightly, "Fancy seeing you here."
Regina blinked slowly at her a long moment before her lips twitched, tugging into a smile, "Hi…" there was a moment of hesitation, as if she was debating something, and then she finished, "Emma."
Emma smiled just a little wider at the sound of her name on Regina's lips, before she ducked her head, mostly to hide the sudden slight blush of her cheeks. She eyed the contents of the table, which it turned out were an excessively large hat collection. She looked back up at Regina, "So what is it they have you doing here exactly?"
"They're hats," Regina explained the obvious, continuing quickly when Emma's eyebrows rose in amusement, "For patients. Did you want one? Every patient is entitled to one."
Emma shrugged, reaching out and brushing her fingers against the material of one of the nearest hats, a hideous pink thing made of some light material - cotton maybe. "I dunno...what do you think?"
Regina's lips pursed as she considered it, her attention drawn away from Emma and towards the pile of hats. She reached forward and dug threw one of the piles, pulling out a knit hat made of soft multi coloured wool. She held out the red, white, and grey knit hat to Emma, "Try this one. It will match your jacket."
Emma's fingers brushed accidently against Regina's as she took the hat and she pulled back quickly. "Thanks," she nearly whispered, pulling the hat onto her head to try it out. Recovering quickly from being momentarily flustered, she grinned at Regina, "What do you think?"
Regina smiled too, the genuine kind of smile that made a person's eyes shine, "It looks good. It suits you."
Emma bit her lip, shrugging a shoulder, not really sure what to say now. She'd rather stay here and talk to Regina than go contend with sitting among the other patients in the crowded waiting room but she didn't want to be a nuisance. Regina was volunteering and Emma was sure she certainly had better things to be doing than talk to her. Emma tugged the hat off of her head, holding the soft wool in one hand while she rubbed the back of her neck with the other. "Well...uh…" she looked behind her at the waiting room and then back at Regina, "Thanks again." She hesitated only another second before she spun and went to find a chair.
xxxxxx
"Who's your friend?"
Regina startled, looking away from where she'd been following Emma's path through the waiting room and over at Barbara. Of all the volunteers she'd met since she'd started volunteering at the cancer centre three weeks ago, Barbara was her favourite - a nice lady around seventy, who was kind and welcoming but who didn't chatter incessantly, or ask excessive personal questions. For that reason, her words weren't harsh as they may have been with another volunteer, just honest, "She's not my friend."
"Oh...I'm sorry. It just…" Barbara hesitated, "It seemed like you knew each other."
Regina's eyes looked away from Barbara and over to where Emma had found a seat and was currently looking rather uncomfortable. She looked back at Barbara, "We've met a few times. Here."
"Ah," Barbara nodded, eyeing her with a knowing expression that made Regina want to look away. After a beat she continued, "Well, regardless, you should go talk to her...she looks like she could use someone friendly right now."
Regina's lips pursed together a moment. "That doesn't seem fair to you. You'll be essentially volunteering alone if I do that."
"Regina," Barbara quirked an amused eyebrow, smiling at her, "I'm not suggesting you leave the country with her. Just that you go sit beside her for a while. If I need your help with something, I will be able to flag you down easily enough. Besides, the point of volunteering is to help the patients. That young woman over there happens to be a patient who is here all by herself and I think you are ideally suited to help her."
Regina wanted to argue for the sake of arguing - she generally didn't take well to being told what to do. The only real argument she could make though was that she wasn't ideally suited to keep Emma company. It wasn't the strongest of arguments. It wasn't as if anyone else was anymore suited than she was. Besides there was the small matter that she actually did find the idea of talking to Emma appealing. Finally, with a soft sigh, she nodded, "Yes, okay. I'll go see if she'd like some company."
xxxxxx
Regina remembered that Emma had ordered hot chocolate at the cafe but the cart of beverages and snacks that the American Cancer Society supplied didn't include hot chocolate, only coffee and tea. Instead she poured two cups, one of orange juice and the other of apple juice, before moving slowly over to where Emma was sitting, staring out the window. She stopped and cleared her throat waiting for green eyes to slide from the window over towards her, the blank expression on Emma's face brightening as she realized who was standing there.
"Hello," Regina smiled, trying to make this less awkward than it felt, "I was just wondering if you maybe wanted some juice? I've got apple or orange." She lifted the cups higher in turn so that Emma would see them.
"Oh…" Emma's eyes widened and she sat up a bit straighter, "uh, sure. Apple? I guess."
"Good choice," Regina held the cup out for Emma to take, wondering now what she was supposed to do with the orange juice - it wouldn't usually be her choice. She could figure that out later, she decided. Right now there was the matter of why she'd come over here. She motioned with her head to the empty seat beside Emma, "Would it be okay if I sat for a bit?"
Emma shrugged. She would appear indifferent if it weren't for the shine in her eyes, which gave away that she was pleased. Regina sat down carefully in the seat beside Emma, balancing the styrofoam cup of orange juice clutched in her right hand carefully on her knee.
"Is it volunteer break time?" Emma quirked an eyebrow at Regina.
"Something like that," Regina shrugged one shoulder, lifting the styrofoam cup up and taking a small sip. She didn't exactly grimace but she doubted she looked pleased at the taste.
"Sorry, I guess I should have let you have the apple juice," Emma shot Regina an apologetic expression.
"No, don't be," Regina shook her head, "I'm sure it's some terrible no name brand that wouldn't come even close to holding a candle to my homemade juice. You really just saved me the disappointment."
"You make your own apple juice?" Emma eyed her curiously.
"I do," Regina nodded, "I have an apple tree."
"Wow," Emma looked impressed, or maybe just amused, as she sipped her juice.
They lapsed into silence, Regina looking away from Emma and around the room. She was surprised at how many people seemed to be glancing in their direction - both subtly and not so subtly.
"Hey, could you..umm…"
Regina's focus snapped back to Emma, who was doing a sort of shuffle in her seat, looking uncomfortable.
"Could you hold my cup for a second?" Emma held her cup out towards Regina.
Wordlessly Regina reached for it, watching as Emma pulled two pill bottles out of her bag, studied the labels a second and then shook what seemed like a fistful, some from each bottle, into her hand. Regina knew she should probably look away but her eyes never left Emma.
Emma dropped the pill bottles back into her bag, holding her hand out to take the cup of juice back from Regina. "Sorry," Emma mumbled, still looking uncomfortable, her eyes dipping away from Regina's. The fistful of pills were gone with one swig of juice, swallowed with a gulp. Emma rubbed the back of her neck, and Regina could practically see her collecting herself, locking away whatever emotion it was that had been spilling out. When she looked back over at Regina it was with a sheepish sort of smile and that same nonchalant tone from the diner, "I didn't want to forget to take those. I think it might have been bad. They're the anti-nausea drugs. I'm not too keen on doing a Linda Blair impression."
Regina wasn't sure the best way to navigate this conversation but she took Emma's lead, letting the conversation stray away from the serious direction it could easily head, instead focusing on the last part of what Emma had said, which she hadn't understood at all. "Linda Blair?"
"You know. The Exorcist? Rotating head? Puke? Lots and lots of puke?" Emme eyed Regina with complete disbelief as Regina just shook her head in the negative. "Seriously? You've seriously never seen a classic movie like The Exorcist?" Emma's eyes twinkled as she teased.
"Classic seems like a bit of stretch, wouldn't you say?" Regina quirked an amused eyebrow at Emma.
Emma just tsked at her, shaking her head.
Regina sipped the disgusting orange juice, masking her smile.
Emma shook her head again, "I can't believe you haven't seen The Exorcist. That's got to be a tragedy."
"Are you always this dramatic?" Regina eyed her in amusement.
Emma just shrugged, smiling, her eyes on Regina as she tipped her styrofoam cup of apple juice into her mouth and chugged the rest of it.
Regina shook her head, suppressing a chuckle.
She was still trying to stop the laughter from escaping as Emma's face went from amused to suddenly pale. Regina frowned, wondering what she'd done wrong. Had her near laughter offended Emma? She'd thought they'd been joking.
Emma said nothing, reaching for something beside her, a red laminated square, her fingers clutching it tightly.
Regina followed Emma's gaze over to the front of the room, where one of the chemo nurses stood in their excessive blue garb. She hadn't heard the nurse calling out a number but she must have. Oh right. They were in a cancer centre - Regina had almost forgotten there for a moment.
Emma stood, still pale, "That's my number." Her voice was strained. Her effort to maintain her unaffected tone not nearly as successful as usual.
Regina nodded, contemplating what to say and deciding on, "Good luck."
Emma nodded too, her lips twitching into a tiny smile, "Thanks. And...uh...thanks for keeping me company."
"Of course, it was my pleasure," Regina nodded once more. And even though that was just something polite to say, something she would have uttered regardless, she found that she actually did mean it.
Emma's smile widened a bit more and then with a soft sigh, as if bracing herself, she walked over towards the nurse who had called her number.
xxxxxx
The nurse who'd called out her number stood and waited for Emma near one of two entrances to the chemo suite. She was holding a rectangular styrofoam container filled with what looked like the bags generally hung from IV poles and she had a chart tucked under her arm. She was wearing some kind of blue gown over the top of her scrubs. It reminded Emma of a HAZMAT suit, minus the face shield. It seemed a bit like overkill and gave Emma the same vaguely horrified feeling that the flush the toilet twice advice in Chemo 101 had.
Wordlessly Emma held out the laminated red square for the nurse to take. Her heart hammered rapidly in her chest, a rush of nerves twisting her stomach in knots.
The nurse, who was about Emma's height with short brown hair and kind eyes, smiled at her, introduced herself as Mary Margaret, and led the way back into the treatment area of the chemo suite.
Emma wasn't sure exactly what to expect and her eyes widened as they entered the space. The area was divided into two rectangular rooms, separated by a wide hallway that afforded sightlines into each room. Mary Margaret turned at the intersection and led Emma into the left room. Reclining chairs lined the walls, one after another after another, a few rows of hospital beds were set up in the middle of the room, with what appeared to be a nurses station of some kind taking up the remainder of the space in the middle. As Mary Margaret led Emma to one of the chairs along the back wall, Emme couldn't help but eye the people in the chairs they passed. She recognized most of them from the waiting room - she'd thought they'd seemed frail and unwell there, but somehow they all looked even worse in here. Maybe it was the harsher lighting, or the tubes connected to them, but they seemed paler, sicker, more exhausted, as if they might possibly fade away at any moment, and it was terrifying. The knots twisted tighter in her stomach as she settled into the chair Mary Margaret pointed to.
Mary Margaret set the styrofoam container down on one of the chair's side trays, her hand slipping over to squeeze Emma's forearm, as if she could sense what Emma was thinking. "It's your first treatment, right?"
Emma nodded.
"Don't worry," Mary Margaret smiled reassuringly, as other nurses bustled around them, checking on other patients, "We'll take good care of you."
Emma gave her a small hesitant smile in response.
Mary Margaret patted her arm once more and then withdrew her hand, pulling a pen from her pocket and opening up the chart that had been previously tucked under her arm, "Alright, let's get the formalities out of the way. Name? Date of birth?"
Emma rattled off the information and Mary Margaret nodded, checking things off in the folder, and then leaning forward to check Emma's plastic ID bracelet, one more check mark in the folder and she folded it back closed. "Alright," she smiled again, far cheerier than anyone who worked in a cancer centre should probably be, "we're off to a good start. I'm just going to get you some Tylenol, which your oncologist ordered because Bleomycin, one of the drugs you're getting today, can give you chills. The Tylenol should help with that. Do you need water?"
Emma, still haven't having found her voice, just nodded.
Mary Margaret was barely gone two minutes, coming back with a little plastic cup with two white pills in it and a paper cup filled with water, handing them to Emma. As Emma tipped the pills into her mouth and washed them away with a swig of water, Mary Margaret fluttered around her, pulling the bags Emma had noticed previously out of the styrofoam container and hanging them from an IV pole to the right of Emma's chair, one small clear one and one larger brown one. It was only now that Emma realized that the bags weren't the only thing in the container, there were also two syringes, one filled with something bright red almost the colour of Kool Aid, one filled with something clear with a terrifying bright yellow warning label affixed to it. Fatal if given intrathecally. For IV use only. Emma swallowed thickly. Were they seriously going to give her something that could be fatal if it wasn't administered properly? That couldn't be real, could it? This whole thing was seeming more and more ridiculous by the minute.
"You have a port right?" Mary Margaret asked, apparently not having noticed Emma's fresh wave of terror, or just choosing not to call attention to it. She waited for Emma's confirmation before she moved back to the nurses station to gather more supplies. She came back with another bag for the IV pole, a large clear one that Emma actually recognized as saline, and yet another styrofoam container, this one filled with tubes and needles and bandages and all sorts of other stuff.
Emma sat silently, unmoving, with wide eyes, as Mary Margaret opened some of the packages in the container. One was a sterile paper of some kind that she tucked into the neck of Emma's shirt, letting it drape down Emma's front and exposing the bandage covering the port in the process, the other was a mask, which she pulled over her own mouth, explaining that it was to protect Emma while they accessed the port. She carefully peeled back the bandage that was covering the port and Emma's eyes dipped to try and get a look at the site, it was an odd angle but she could make out the neat line of dissolvable stitches just over the hard bump. She looked back up as Mary Margaret pulled more items from the styrofoam container, tearing an alcohol swab and cleaning the area, and then feeling around for a moment as she raised the needle like thing she'd removed from clear packaging.
"There's bumps on the port that tell me where the needle is supposed to go," Mary Margaret explained to Emma, "It should only hurt for a moment."
The sharp sting, so much different than a needle, much more like a bee sting, was over almost as soon as it started. Emma didn't even flinch.
"Just like that," Mary Margaret smiled, and sure enough there was now a tube dangling from Emma's chest. "We just have to flush it now, to make sure it's clean and functioning," Mary Margaret explained as she connected a syringe to the end of the tube and pushed slowly.
Emma grimaced, moving her tongue around in her mouth, surprised at the sudden bad taste there.
"Bring some hard candies next time," Mary Margaret told her, catching the expression on her face, "It will mask the taste."
"What is it?" Emma's forehead crinkled.
"It's just saline," Mary Margaret explained.
"Really?" Emma's brow crinkled further. How could something that essentially amounted to salt and water taste so absolutely horrible?
Mary Margaret just smiled knowingly at her. She removed the saline syringe and attached another syringe to the end of the tube, "This is heparin. It prevents blood clots. It shouldn't taste bad. We generally don't get complaints about it."
Thankfully Mary Margaret was right.
Once the second syringe was removed, there was more fluttering around, with Mary Margaret disposing of the contents of the port access kit and hooking up the saline line from the IV pole to one of the access points on the tube now dangling from Emma's port, pushing buttons on the IV pump to set the flow rate, the pump itself whirring to life, making steady noise as liquid began to drip from the saline bag, flowing down through the tube into port.
"Okay," Mary Margaret clasped her hands together once she seemed satisfied with the pump, "Here's how this works. You're getting ABVD. Adriamycin is this one," she pointed to the red syringe, "I'll push that one in manually, slowly over about fifteen minutes. Then comes Bleomycin," she pointed to the small clear bag, "We'll use the pump for that one and it will take about twenty minutes. After that, we'll do Vinblastine," she pointed now to the clear syringe, "this one is like the Adriamycin, I'll push it manually but we can do that one quickly, it will only take a minute. And then all that will be left is Dacarbazine," she pointed to the large brown bag, "we need to infuse that one slower, it will probably take about two hours."
It seemed like a long time to be sitting in one chair but Emma just nodded, watching as Mary Margaret settled on a chair in front of her to get started on the syringe full of red liquid.
xxxxxx
The next three hours were slow but mostly uneventful with Emma spending the majority of the time reclined in the chair listening to music with her eyes shut. There was one incident halfway through when she'd had to use the washroom and she'd stood up and started to move and Mary Margaret had had to rush over and stop her - it turned out that the IV pole was plugged into the wall. The washroom trip itself had also been an event - Adriamycin apparently came out the same Kool Aid red colour it went in as, which was a sort of horrifying revelation. But when she was finally unhooked, a small piece of gauze placed over the spot where her port had been accessed, and her red leather jacket back in place, she couldn't help but think that the whole thing hadn't been nearly as bad as she'd envisioned it being.
She was a little disappointed that Regina was no longer in the waiting room when she exited but she didn't dwell on it. She just tugged on the red knit hat that Regina had picked out for her and headed out to the parking garage to drive herself back to her apartment. She'd been worried that she might not be able to drive home after the treatment, Belle's previous offering of a driving service weighing heavy on her mind, so she was happy to find that that wasn't the case.
She was tired but she didn't actually feel so bad.
xxxxxx
Regina stopped on her way home from the cancer centre at Granny's, a diner - well more like the only diner - in Storybrooke. She crossed paths with Kathryn and her husband Frederick on her way up the path to the entrance, they were just coming out of the building.
"Regina! Hi," Kathryn greeted, her tone of voice cheerful and friendly. Frederick adding a polite nod to supplement his wife's greeting.
"Hi Kathryn, Frederick," Regina nodded her own head in greeting to the couple.
"Did you just get back from Boston?" Kathryn guessed.
"Yes," Regina confirmed.
Kathryn smiled, "And how's the volunteering going?"
"Well," Regina offered another one word response, sliding her hands into the pockets of her jacket to protect them from the cold, her gloves simply not warm enough.
"Make any friends?" Kathryn asked next while Frederick shuffled beside her, seeming as affected by the cold as Regina was feeling.
Regina's lips pursed together. It was a strange question to be asking about a volunteer position. The purpose wasn't for Regina to make friends and Kathryn knew that. "No," the terse word left her mouth even as her brain brought forth the memory of Barbara assuming she and Emma were friends, even as she recalled the way Emma had smiled when she'd tried on the knit hat that Regina had picked out, even as she remembered Emma's twinkling eyes and teasing tone as she'd heckled her for never having seen The Exorcist. Emma couldn't be her friend. Emma had cancer. For all Regina knew Emma was dying. As terrible of a person as she knew it made her, she just couldn't let herself get attached to someone she would lose. She just couldn't.
Kathryn glanced over at Frederick, something about her expression seeming much too amused for Regina's liking, but when her head tilted back to Regina all she said was, "Well, we'll let you get inside. It's cold out here. But we should get together soon. Dinner at our place. Or something."
xxxxxx
Back at home, Regina sat down in her office to catch up on some work - she couldn't very well be taking a day out of her work week to volunteer and not be making up that time. She opened the spreadsheet with the Town's budget. It was perfectly balanced, of course, she'd balanced it herself, but that wouldn't stop some of the less educated councillors from trying to poke holes in it. They always wanted money to be allocated to frivolous items (like repairing a clock in a clock tower that had been broken for as long as Regina lived here) without seeming to understand that money to do so would have to be taken away from necessities (like winter snow removal efforts).
Her plan for this evening was to prepare for the questions she was sure to get at tomorrow evening's scheduled council meeting. She studied the numbers in the spreadsheet for ten minutes before the cursor of the mouse drifted over to the Internet browser. She hesitated a moment before she doubled clicked, opening the browser and typing Hodgkin's Lymphoma into the search engine.
She was only taking a short break, she told herself. Five minutes and then she would go back to her spreadsheet. She double clicked on the first link and started reading.
It was two hours later when she finally stopped reading.
Emma probably wouldn't die, she decided. Emma was about to have a really rough few months though it seemed.
xxxxxx
That same night, back in Boston, Emma fell asleep on her couch at 8 pm, woke up at 3 am and dragged herself into her bedroom, not bothering to do anything but kick off her jeans and pull the covers up and over herself before she was back asleep.
She didn't wake again until 10 am the following morning, blinking groggily at the light filtering in through the cracks between the blind slats, rolling over onto her back and stretching as she took inventory of the way she felt. She hadn't known what to expect, so she'd expected the worst. Expected that she wouldn't leave the bathroom for days. Expected that that Linda Blair impression she'd joked to Regina about wouldn't turn out to be so much of a joke but a reality. She'd gone as far as telling Tony that she would be unavailable to work for at least a few days and that she'd call him on Monday with a status update. And, yet, she sort of felt okay. Sure she couldn't remember the last time she'd slept quite so long, something was definitely up with her mouth - it just felt off - and there was a vague uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach but this was bearable.
Huh, she thought as she rolled out of bed, plodding to the bathroom, maybe this wouldn't be so bad.
xxxxxx
The vague uneasy feeling in the pit of Emma's stomach didn't get any better as the day went on but it remained manageable, an annoyance, nothing more. Emma took her anti-nausea medication as scheduled and spent the day curled up on the couch watching TV. She made macaroni and cheese for lunch and ate the leftovers for dinner. By the end of the day she was downright bored.
The only real sign that chemo was having at least some effect on her was that, even with having dozed on and off all day on the couch, she was sound asleep within minutes of curling up in her bed that night.
xxxxxx
The following morning, lying in bed and taking appraisal of how she felt once more, Emma was just as surprised as she'd been the day before. She still felt okay. Maybe slightly worse than the day before but definitely not horrible. It was strange, unsettling, almost. Things didn't tend to go Emma's way, they never had. The possibility that she could make it through chemo relatively unscathed was almost unfathomable.
Yet, when she took her last dose of anti-nausea medication that evening with dinner - soup she'd gone out to get from the Chinese restaurant down the street - she felt the fluttering of hope.
Maybe this really wouldn't be so bad.
xxxxxx
Emma should have known better than to have hope about anything - that was the first thing she thought when she woke up the next morning.
Gone was the vague unease she'd felt the previous two days, replaced with full blown horrible.
Her stomach was rolling like she was on a small boat out at sea in the middle of a storm and the sort of unpleasant taste in her mouth from the previous two days had somehow magnified exponentially overnight, it now tasted like something had maybe died in there, and, as if that wasn't enough, it hurt.
It took her a half an hour to talk herself into leaving her bed to make a trip to the washroom - the pressure on her bladder finally winning out against her desire to remain still. By the time she was done washing her hands, the nausea had increased tenfold, and she stumbled blearily back to her bedroom, practically flinging herself onto her bed and curling up into the tightest bawl she could manage, slamming her eyes shut and begging her stomach to settle, begging the contents of her stomach to remain where they were.
She had a bottle of back up anti-nausea medication that the doctor had prescribed but it was in the kitchen. It was a small apartment but right now it felt like that pill bottle may as well be half a world away. She couldn't move. The only thing saving her from throwing up right now, she was certain, was this fetal position. The pills would have to wait.
xxxxxx
It was two hours before Emma even tried to uncurl from the fetal position. She had a brief thought that this would be so much easier if she had someone to help her, someone to just bring her the pills from the kitchen, but she quickly shut that train of thought down, growling at herself, and spitting out angrily, "Shut up brain," loud enough that the sound bounced off her bedroom walls.
She'd taken care of herself her entire life. She was good at it. Good enough to have survived this long at least. Now would just have to be the same. There was no other choice. There was never any other choice.
She sat up, taking deep breaths, trying desperately to quell the waves in her stomach, as she rotated and set her feet down gingerly on the floor boards. Two more deep breaths and she was pushing herself up and out of the bed, moving slowly and carefully from the bedroom out into the kitchen, leaning heavily against the counter as she filled a cup with water from the sink. She eyed the fridge and the cupboards, contemplating food, but as the rolling in her stomach picked up yet again she shook her head, snagging the pill bottle she'd come for off the counter instead and stumbling back towards her bedroom.
She deposited the glass of water and the bottle of pills hastily on her nightstand and flung herself back into her bed, curling back up into the fetal position, her hands locked firmly around her knees, her teeth biting down hard on her lip, and the toes of one foot twitching out a steady rhythm meant to distract from the angry ocean in her belly.
It was twenty minutes before she felt confident enough to uncurl, scooting carefully over to edge of the bed to reach for the pill bottle, shaking out two pills, and then reaching for the glass of water, taking the tiniest sip to help guide the pills down her throat.
The water glass and the pill bottle set back on her nightstand, Emma curled back up into a ball, pulling her blankets tight around herself and begging sleep to take her away from this nightmare.
xxxxxx
Emma slept fitfully on and off for the rest of the day. When she woke the next morning it was to the same aggressive nausea from the previous day and she groaned in disappointment.
She felt more determined today though and decided that a shower might be a good start to making herself feel better. After all, she'd been in the same clothes for two days straight and, frankly, she felt disgusting.
She realized her mistake about three minutes into her shower when dark spots began to appear before her eyes. She braced herself against the shower wall with one hand, closing her eyes, but even that was not enough to stop the dizziness. Fearing she was about to pass out and hit her head and die right here naked in this shower, she fumbled with the shower taps, turning the water spray off and carefully stepping out. With shaky hands she threw a towel down on the floor and lowered herself onto the ground, curling up into a ball. There was still shampoo in her hair and her wet skin in the cool air reduced her to shivering uncontrollably within minutes but slowly the black spots stopped threatening to invade her vision.
Even with her vision restored, Emma didn't dare move for a long time, not trusting her body in the least. She hadn't had anything to eat the previous day she realized. The only thing she'd consumed being her backup medication and half a glass of water. That had most definitely been a mistake.
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Even though all Emma really wanted to do was curl back up in her bed, after she'd finally managed to stand again and quickly rinse the shampoo from her hair, and then after she'd taken half an hour to dress herself in clean pajamas, she forced herself out of her bedroom and into the kitchen.
She wasn't going to make yesterday's mistake.
She sat at the small kitchen table while instant oatmeal heated in the microwave. It felt like the longest two minutes of her life. When the microwave finally dinged that it was done, Emma rose carefully and removed the bowl from the appliance, snagging a spoon and moving over into the living room, sitting with her knees drawn tightly to her chest and the bowl of oatmeal balanced on top of her bent knees.
She shuffled small spoonfuls of the oatmeal painstakingly slowly into her mouth. She wanted to stop after the first bite but she forced herself to continue. After half an hour, she'd managed to force feed herself half the bowl and she finally conceded defeat, setting the unfinished oatmeal onto the coffee table.
Perhaps this was going to be her new reality. Painstakingly simply tasks, insurmountably difficult. It was a dreadful thought.
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